


Of Thugs and Okinawans

by Caraithyn



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:10:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caraithyn/pseuds/Caraithyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Atobe Kumiko witnesses the wrath of Higa as they descend on Akutsu Jin. Taking pity on Akutsu, she takes him home and bandages his wounds and starts to fall for him, much to her brother, Keigo's, dismay. So, Keigo and his boyfriend Tezuka decide to set her up with some of their former teammates in hopes of deterring her from going after Akutsu. However an unexpected change in the final date's identity chucks a wrench into Keigo's original plan and into Kumiko's life forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As this was the second fic I ever wrote, it again only has mentions of yaoi relationships and the main character is female. However I did manage to get used to writing in third person on this one. After being edited it also ended up being kind of long. But I hope its still enjoyable!

All Atobe Kumiko wanted to think about as she made her way to her car after school was having a relaxing weekend with the house all to herself. Her aunt and uncle were away on business for several days and her cousin was still away at college. She didn’t often get to have the run of the house with no one else around so she relished it every chance she got.  
However, the gods apparently had other plans for her. That was the afternoon her life changed forever.

As a result of arriving to school late after a dentist appointment, Kumiko had been forced to park in the farthest lot from the school building that sat adjacent to the tennis courts because the other lots had already been full. Her tardiness had also caused her to miss an important test in her morning class. However, she had already made arrangements with the teacher several days before to stay after the school day had ended and everyone went home to make it up. After finishing the test, Kumiko then had the rest of her usual Friday choir practice. So the only people still on campus by the time she was finished with everything, were some of the various sports teams and perhaps a teacher or two that was still grading papers.   
Instead of being able to look forward to a relaxing weekend with her aunt and uncle gone Kumiko instead was trying to work out how to divide up the pile of homework she had been given so that she could get everything done and still have some time to herself as she ventured across the parking lot.  
As she made her way up the parking lot, she glanced over towards the school building and noticed a group of boys whom she had never seen before marching towards the tennis courts from the opposite end. She could tell even from this distance they were looking for trouble. One of them even had a look on his face that Kumiko had seen her brother’s face twisted up into many times which only proved her suspicions.   
Whenever her brother had that look on his face, he meant serious business. This strange guy looked like he was simply out for blood.  
Any smart person would have simply ignored the strangers and continued walking to their car like they hadn’t seen anyone. Apparently, Kumiko wasn’t feeling very smart that day because she changed directions and turned towards the tennis courts trying to look as if she had been heading that way to begin with. When she finally reached her destination, she ducked down behind one of the bushes that lined that one side of the fence that surround the courts.   
Once she was sure she was hidden as best as she could be, Kumiko reached through the leaves and parted two of the branches so she could see what was happening on the other side of the fence.  
Kumiko could tell that tennis practice was already over and had been long enough for the entire team to have showered and went home. Except the captain of the team it seemed. Kumiko watched as the tall figure made his way across the courts from the locker room, not paying any attention to his surroundings as he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, extracted one from the box and started to light it.  
The hidden girl wanted to cry out in warning as he was heading straight for the strange men who now stood just inside the gate to the tennis courts. But part of her didn’t want to alert them of her presence while the other part was simply frozen in fear. So she decided to simply watch the scene before her. After all she could be wrong. They could just want to challenge the captain to a friendly game of tennis.   
_Yea right, those guys look like they just want to cause trouble,_ Kumi thought to herself as she looked on through the branches.  
There were three of the strangers.   
One was tall, taller than any guy she had ever seen before. He was the one with the look similar to her brother’s but now that she saw the guy at a closer distance, she thought he looked more like he could set someone ablaze just by staring at them for any amount of time. His limbs were long and thin and his hair was a purple color with his bangs colored a silver, almost white color.  
Another of the men was rather small, but he was also very muscular and Kumiko definitely wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley. He wore a solid white ball cap on his head with a mess of bright red, frizzy curls sticking out from beneath it.  
The third, who seemed to be the leader of the trio, was also much smaller than his vertically inclined friend. He wore small rectangular lensed frameless glasses and his black as night hair slicked back on his scalp with one unruly clump hanging down in his face. The way he carried himself made him look more preppy than the other two, who looked rather thuggish themselves, but the look on his face made Kumiko shiver with fear. Both for what she could tell he wanted to do as well as by the mere presence of the strange men.  
The one thing they all had in common, other than the feeling of not wanting to meet any of them down a dark alley, was they were all very tan. Tanner than most people around the area, which gave Kumiko the impression that they definitely weren’t from anywhere close. In her life she had only seen people that tan that lived in Okinawa but she couldn’t imagine what would bring three high school aged boys from Okinawa all the way to Tokyo.  
“Well, aren’t we lucky boys? The exact man we came to see is coming out to greet us,” the preppy one said as he pressed his glasses to his face and smiled perhaps the most evil smile she had ever seen. And that was saying something as her brother was Atobe Keigo.   
However, the malicious grin was ignored as the captain just kept walking towards them acting as if they weren’t standing in his way to the exit.  
Kumiko didn’t know Akutsu Jin very well. They had one class together but he hardly ever showed up to it and she wondered how he wasn’t failing with his very poor attendance record. He wasn’t someone she’d associate with either. Most people considered him a thug and any respectable person wouldn’t even consider getting involved with him.  
She had seen his tennis skill when he was still a freshman and her brother’s school had played a match against Yamabuki. Akutsu was overly violent and wasn’t against abusing the power he held in his racket to slam a tennis ball at his opponent and injure them. Aside from that though, he was pretty good.  
The bespectacled leader of the group snarled at being ignored and when Akutsu was within arm’s reach of the man, he put his hand to the captain of Yamabuki High school’s chest and Kumiko never would have imagined the smaller man would be able to stop the much larger Akutsu but when the palm hit his chest, Akutsu finally stopped and looked up to acknowledge the trio.  
“Kite what do you want?” Akutsu asked removing the cigarette from his mouth to speak and sounding like he didn’t really care why they were there but would ask anyway.  
“We hear you’ve been bragging about kicking Rin’s ass in tennis last week. As I recall, you never finished that match because your _mommy_ called you away,” the smaller, redheaded man said with a sneer.  
Kumiko couldn’t be sure but she thought that she saw the leader shoot the smaller man a very fierce look but her attention was pulled back to the conversation before she could be sure.  
Akutsu put the unlit cigarette back in his mouth, lit it and took a long slow draw from it before responding, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”  
The tallest boy looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel as he continued to glare at Akutsu. He started to move forward and Kumiko drew in a quick breath. However, the bespectacled leader stuck his arm out to hold the other boy back and said, “Just wait Chinen-kun. You have to wait for the opportune moment to do these things. I’m not finished talking to Akutsu-kun yet.”  
Chinen snarled as he shouted through the empty courts, “Damn it Kite, I want to kick his ass!”  
Kite sighed as he turned back to the silver haired man as he said, “I’m very sorry about him. He’s rather close with Hirakoba-kun and he doesn’t like rumors to be spread about his friend.”  
This time, Kumiko _did_ notice the glance in the red headed boy’s direction but she didn’t know what it was for as he hadn’t done or said anything that she could tell to warrant such a look.  
As she looked back to Akutsu and saw him simply standing there smoking his cigarette, Kumiko didn’t know if she was more annoyed or surprised by his reaction. Even she could tell that the three were there to make trouble but the tennis captain was acting like they were just there to shoot the breeze with him. She may not be overly familiar with him but Kumiko didn’t necessarily dislike him either and certainly wouldn’t want him, or anyone else for that matter, to get beat up over something apparently so trivial.  
She tried to tell herself to just turn around and sneak away and just act like she never noticed the three unfamiliar boys. However, her feet stayed planted where they were, forcing her to watch what she was sure to be a brutal beating.   
While Kumiko tried to convince herself to run away, the fight had started. Though she hadn’t witnessed any fights before, from what she could tell, Akutsu was doing pretty well at first. That is until the red head moved behind him and grabbed a hold of his arms.  
Akutsu struggled against the smaller boy but his captor’s arms were surprisingly strong. The silver haired man changed his strategy to try to use the restraint as an advantage as he began to flail and kick his legs in hopes of coming in contact with one of the other boys.  
All that got him was a sharp jab in the stomach from Kite which caused Akutsu to go limp as all the air was stolen from him and he tried to get it back.  
As the red head continued to hold the breathless Akutsu, Kite moved aside to allow Chinen to relieve his itch to fight. The man walked slowly up to Akutsu and then just began hitting him over and over again, every punch making contact with his opponent’s face.  
Kumiko didn’t know if she was terrified or disgusted by it but the entire time he was being punched in the face, Akutsu kept a smile stretched across his face.  
After several more punches, Kumiko couldn’t stand to watch the rest so she turned her head away as a lone tear rolled down her cheek


	2. Chapter 2

As she sat in her hiding spot in the bushes with her face turned away from the fight happening inside the tennis courts, Kumiko couldn’t help but wonder why anyone, no matter how evil they were, would just gang up on someone, three to one, about something so trivial about a small rumor about someone beating another in a game of tennis.  
But even with her eyes shut tight and trying as hard as she could to block out the sound, Kumiko could still hear the sounds of Chinen’s knuckles hitting the solid mass of Akutsu’s body as the horrible beating continued behind her.  
She didn’t notice that the punches had stopped but when the sound of the gate onto the tennis courts creaking echoed through the empty courts, she turned back around so she could peer around the edge of the bush. What she saw was the three strange tan boys walking away from her acting as if they had just finished tennis practice and were on their way home and hadn’t just left another man lying lifeless in the middle of the tennis court.  
Kumiko didn’t want to even think about what had happened while she wasn’t watching but as soon as the coast was clear, she crawled out from behind the bush and stood without bothering to dust any dirt off of her before she ran to the chain link gate to peer in at Akutsu lying where the boys left him in the middle of the closest tennis court to the gate.  
She struggled slightly with the latch on the gate but once she got it open she rushed over to him and started to gently shake his shoulder and call his name, trying to get a response from him as a signal that he was still alive. When she heard him groan she sighed with relief and slowly rolled him over onto his back.  
When he was facing up, she gasped at the sight of the fight’s aftermath on his face.  
His nose was clearly broken as it was currently sitting very crooked from its original place and it was pouring blood. The man also had the beginning of a very dark bruise forming around one eye. His lip was cut as well but it looked like most of the blood on his face was coming from his nose. He also had a cut on his forehead but she couldn’t tell where the blood from that ended and the blood from his nose started since it was all mixed together and had been rubbed around his entire face along with any blood that had leaked from Chinen’s knuckles as he caused the wounds.  
As slowly as she could, Kumiko sat Akutsu up and he groaned in pain and a hand shot to his side which made her worry that perhaps one of his ribs was broken.   
Once she had him sitting, she started to wonder what the hell she should do with him. She knew it was too late for anyone but maybe a few jocks to be still left around the school grounds but she didn’t really want to go hunt one of them down. She doubted any would want to help Akutsu Jin anyway.  
“Umm, do you need a doctor?” she asked him uncertainly. “I could call an ambulance or something.”  
“No. No hospitals,” he said, exasperated. “I just need to lie down for a while.”  
When he looked up at her for the first time, he looked as though he wanted to scream in pain and fall into a heap as he burst into tears at the same time but was didn’t want to be caught doing either. Kumiko felt pretty bad for the guy after witnessing what happened so she thought or a second and remembered that her aunt and uncle, who she lived with so she could stay at Yamabuki were going to be away that weekend on a business trip, leaving her alone in the house for several days. They would have already left so the house would already be empty.  
“Alright, let’s get you up and to my car. It’s in the lot next to the courts so it won’t be far. You can crash at my house for a while.”  
She started to help him stand but he didn’t have enough strength to hold himself up very long and almost fell on top of her. With a lot of effort on her part though, Kumiko got him standing and allowed him to lean, very heavily, against her as they walked the short distance to her car. When they reached it and she awkwardly piled him into the passenger’s seat, she was glad that she had decided to borrow her aunt’s SUV to drive to school that day since her aunt and uncle were having a taxi pick them up to take them to the airport. If she would have driven her own car, a little Volkswagen Beetle, she would never have been able to get him in the vehicle, especially on her own.  
As she drove, the two students sat in silence until Kumiko broke it by saying, “I’m Atobe Kumiko by the way.”  
The only response she received was, “Akutsu.”  
“I know who you are. We are in the same Chemistry class, not that you’d know that since you never show up. But I also saw your match against Hyoutei a couple years ago. You’re pretty good.”  
Her passenger didn’t respond to her praise or her criticism of his attendance record. So, they rode the rest of the journey to her aunt and uncle’s home in silence. When she pulled into the garage, Kumiko climbed out of the car and hurried over to help Akutsu out of the car. When she reached him, she realized she didn’t need to hurry as the wounded man either wasn’t bothered in trying to get out on his own or was too afraid to agitate his possibly broken rib so he simply sat there staring out the windshield as Kumiko struggled to get Akutsu out of her aunt’s car.  
When she finally had him in the house, she laid him gingerly on the couch and allowed him to rest for a moment while she went to the kitchen to get a towel, a bowl of water and some pain killers. When she returned to him, she handed him the glass of water and the pills and he tossed back the medicine quickly. Kumiko was surprised he didn’t just take the pills dry but Akkutsu did drink enough water to allow the pills to go down easily before handing her the cup back. She sat the glass on the table that sat beside the couch before dipping the cloth into the bowl of water and started to wipe at the blood on his forehead and elsewhere on his face. Akutsu reached up to take the towel rom her but she swatted his hand away and caught his eye with a fierce glare. The wounded man got the message to just allow her to clean him up or she’d make his pain worse so he laid his head back down and Kumiko continued her work.  
When she was finished, she took the bowl and glass back to the kitchen and sat them in the sink as she went to the freezer to get an ice pack for his already blackening eye.  
As she handed him the cold compress, Akutsu surprised her by saying, “Thank you.” The uncertainty in his voice told her that he didn’t say the two words often. “You really didn’t have to help me. If you just let me crash here for an hour or so, I’ll call Sengoku and have him come pick me up.”  
Kumiko surprised herself by replying, “It’s not a problem. “My aunt and uncle are gone for the weekend so you can stay here as long as you need to,” she added with a small smile.  
As he moved his feet at the other end of the couch trying to get more comfortable, Kumiko glanced over and noticed that his shirt was covered in blood and his pants were caked with dirt. She guessed she was so focused on the wounds on his face to notice his dirty clothes as she helped him away from the tennis courts to notice it before.  
“Shit, your shirt’s all bloody,” she commented.  
Akutsu was still looking down to see for himself as she bounced up and ran to her cousin’s room. She was thankful that he was still away at school studying for his final exams and wouldn’t notice if she borrowed an old pair of sweatpants and a faded t-shirt that he mostly wore around the house. Once she had the clothes in hand, she returned to the living room and was surprised to find Akutsu had sat up on his own. Kumiko imagined the pain killers had started to take effect and he wasn’t in quite as much pain as he had been but he still could only fumble to try to get the buttons of the jacket on his school uniform undone. After watching for a few seconds, Kumiko took pity on him and moved over to him, lying the clothes in her hand on the floor next to her as she knelt and reached up to pull his hands away from the blood soaked fabric.  
Akutsu didn’t object to her actions and allowed her to very gently undo the last few buttons on his shirt and then slide it down off of his shoulders. Once it was off, Kumiko threw it on the floor and turned to pick up her brother’s shirt. When she turned back to him, Akutsu placed a single finger under her chin and tilted her face up so he could look at her for a moment before slowly leaning in and pressing his lips to hers.  
After a second, he tried to deepen the kiss and Kumiko allowed him. He tasted like cigarettes and, even though she hated the stupid things, she found herself enjoying the kiss. Akutsu bent down and hooked an arm around her waist to pull her up on top of him as they stretched out on the couch. However as soon as the pressure of her body hit his, he groaned in pain and she quickly leapt off of him.  
Kumiko quickly turned away from him as she reached for her cousin’s shirt again from where it had been dropped as she was picked up and she asked him as casually as she could, “So who were those three guys that did this to you?”  
He seemed surprised that she had seen what had happened but didn’t act ashamed or concerned at all as he took the shirt that she offered him and slid his slowly over his head as he responded, “Just some pricks from Higa High School in Okinawa. They are in the area for the national tournament that starts tomorrow and like to gang up on people just for the hell of it and beat the shit out of them for no reason.”  
Akutsu didn’t elaborate and she didn’t press him. Though his response did answer her question about why guys from Okinawa would be in Tokyo. As he stood and started to unfasten his pants, Kumiko grabbed the semi-warm ice pack that had been discarded on the table and took it back to the kitchen to have an excuse to leave the silver haired man to change into her cousin’s sweatpants in privacy. She was afraid if she stayed she may try to help him change and end up doing something she really shouldn’t while he was so vulnerable and obviously willing to do something with her.  
When she returned from the kitchen, Akutsu had returned to lying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. He had thrown his pants with his shirt on the floor and as she bent to pick them up, she saw that he had removed the pack of cigarettes and the lighter, along with a thin black cell phone, from his pocket and sat them on the table. Kumiko took the dirtied clothes to put them in the wash to clean them up.   
She had had experience getting blood out of tennis uniforms before when her brother’s teammates would be forced to practice so much hard that their knees would be bloodied and their knuckle’s too. There had also been a few instances where some first year had ended up with a bloody nose from another amateur tennis player trying to show off and hitting him in the face with a tennis ball only to be punished with their own bloody nose. Because Hyoutei’s team was rather secretive about how they trained, or punished know-it-all first years, Kumiko had volunteered to clean the uniforms and had developed a special solution that was perfect for cleaning blood and dirt from white uniforms, making them almost new again.  
After applying almost her entire container of the cleaning solution on the uniform, Kumiko returned to the living room and noticed that Akutsu had fallen asleep. When she saw him sleeping, her first instinct was to just leave him alone and go start on her homework but she found that she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the figure sleeping on her aunt and uncle’s couch.  
Akutsu didn’t really seem as tough when he was asleep. His silvery hair spread out against the crimson red of the sofa contrasted so beautifully and it reminded her of a brooch that her brother had given their mother for her birthday once that held rubies intertwined intricately with white-gold leaves of ivy. Normally his hair was very solid looking and stood as high off his head as it could possibly go but now it was limp and still a little damp from the shower he took after practice. It hung down over his blackened eye, covering it, and despite the other bruises and small cuts on his face from the beating, his face looked softer and Kumiko would never had thought he was considered a thug and was so feared by most people.  
As her eyes wandered down his body, she noticed that he was quite muscular and she could see the bottom of what looked like a perfect six-pack peeking out from under the bottom of her cousin’s old shirt where it slid up and away from the waistband of the sweatpants. While the pants fit his waist well, he had very long legs which caused the sweatpants to come down only to the middle of his calf. Despite the type of fabric of the pants, Kumiko could still tell that his legs were also very muscular and she knew that they had become that way from years of playing tennis. When she saw him start to stir, Kumiko turned quickly and ran towards her room, shutting the door behind her and standing against it for a moment with a light flush covering her cheeks.  
~~~  
An hour later, Kumiko had moved his uniform to the dryer and decided that it would probably be a good idea to go check on Akutsu. When she looked into the living room, she found him sitting upright on the couch watching TV. He glanced over at her when she entered the room but then turned his attention back to the screen.  
She had barely sat down next to him on the couch when he asked, without taking his eyes off the screen, “So you’re one of _those_ Atobe’s huh? When you told me your name on the way here I was apparently in too much pain to make the connection until I saw the picture of you and Hyoutei’s old tennis captain on the mantel. You two look a lot alike.”  
Kumiko knew all too well of the bitter rivalry between almost every school, including Yamabuki, and Hyoutei. And she also knew most people’s opinions of her brother weren’t good. So, she answered him defensively, “Is that a bad thing to be related to Atobe Keigo? If it is, then you may want to go ahead and call Sengoku and have him pick you up. But, if you’d actually get to know me, you will find that I’m nothing like my older brother. I’ll agree that he’s a pompous ass, but he’s my brother and I still love him and will defend him no matter what.”  
During her rant, Akutsu had taken his attention away from the television to just simply stare at her. After a second, he finally said, “I get it; you don’t like being compared to your brother. I was just making an observation.”   
He paused for another moment as if he was debating whether to say what he was about to or not before he put his arm around Kumiko’s waist and pulled her closer to him. She looked up at him apprehensively but he simply smiled as if he was trying to be reassuring but just wasn’t quite pulling it off and said, “You know, I can already tell you are nothing like him. Atobe would have just walked away and acted like he didn’t see the three pricks from Higa and he definitely wouldn’t have stayed to watch what they did. Well, unless it was to laugh at it. He also would have just left me lying there in the middle of the court and let someone else find me. That is if anyone did.”  
Kumiko knew what he was saying about her brother was mostly true but she was more focused on his arm around her waist to care about the parts that weren’t. She knew if she let him continue to hold her close to him that they would probably end up kissing again. While she was alone in her room letting him sleep she decided that she really didn’t want that to happen because she wasn’t really sure she wanted to get too involved with Akutsu Jin. As he started to nuzzle her neck and plant small kisses on her chin and ear, she pulled away from his and mumbled that she was going to go check to see if his clothes were dry.  
When she returned, with the pristine white Yamabuki uniform in her hands, he was on the phone.  
“I don’t care, Sengoku. Just don’t take too damn long.”  
He snapped his phone shut roughly and she thought about how mean he had sounded compared to a few minutes earlier while they talked and he had his arm wrapped around her.  
“You should try to be nicer to your friends,” she said, causing him to look up and glare at her as she handed him his uniform.  
Akutsu continued to stare at her for a moment, the look not even causing Kumiko to flinch, before grabbing the clothes from her hand and tossing them on the couch as he started stripping off her cousin’s clothes. She quickly turned away from him as he pulled the shirt off and after a minute, she could feel him come up behind her and snake his arms around her waist, again.  
“I’m sure Sengoku will take his sweet time getting here if you’d like to see just how nice I can be,” he whispered in her ear.  
Kumiko actually hesitated for a moment but got a hold of herself quickly before gently pulling his arms off of her and going to collect her cousin’s discarded clothes from the floor. She could tell Akutsu wasn’t happy about being rejected a second time by the way he growled and snatched his phone and cigarettes off the table before storming out of the house to wait for Sengoku outside.


	3. Chapter 3

Kumiko didn’t know how long it took for Sengoku to pick Akutsu up. After taking her cousin’s clothes in and dropping them in the laundry room to be washed later, she busied herself with starting dinner to try to take her mind off of Akutsu.  
It didn’t work as well as she had hoped however. More than once she had to catch herself before the knife she was holding sliced her finger as she worked to chop the vegetables in front of her. Then, as she was sautéing the veggies, her mind would start to wonder to thoughts of the kiss and how peaceful and almost innocent Akutsu looked when he was asleep and she almost let them start to burn in the skillet. The rest of her weekend went no better as she tried to study and do her assignments.  
The next week at school she noticed that Akutsu didn’t show up for class at all. In the past, he would at least show up for at least one class period so as to not fail entirely. From what Kumiko overheard from some of the members of the tennis team talking, he hadn’t shown up for practice either and no one had heard from him since Sengoku dropped him off the day he picked Akutsu up from Kumiko’s aunt’s house. But, she couldn’t worry about his attendance record because she was having her own problems just trying to forget how much she enjoyed kissing him and how he seemed so much nicer that day than she had previously come to expect. That is when Kumiko wasn’t dismissing his advances towards her.  
After debating with herself for several days, she finally decided to confide in her brother about it and ask for his advice.  
~~~  
Keigo and Kumiko were very close as they grew up. Even when her brother discovered his talent on the tennis courts and spent most of his time practicing, Keigo still found time to play and hang out with his younger sister. Then, when their parents decided to enroll their son at Hyoutei so he could be a part of their tennis program and then moved their family across the city so they could be closer to the school while Kumiko moved in with her aunt and uncle in order to stay at Yamabuki, Kumiko visited her brother, and their parents on a regular basis and talked to her brother on the phone several times a week.  
She went to visit Keigo a week after the incident with Akutsu. He had a day off, though granted for Keigo, every day was his day off, so Kumiko decided to go to his apartment so they would have more privacy. As she made her way to the apartment building where their parents paid for the large, upscale apartment for their son, Kumiko knew subconsciously that what she was about to do was a very bad idea. But Keigo was the one person she trusted to confide in about her feelings for Akutsu.  
They sat down at the vast island that rested in the middle of the kitchen with a pot of tea and without being told, Kumiko knew that Keigo’s long-time best friend and, for lack of a better word, housekeeper/assistant, Kabaji Munehiro was off cleaning her brother’s room and making it spotless as usual.  
“Akutsu Jin? _The_ Akutsu Jin, the captain of Yamabuki’s tennis team?” he asked flabbergasted as he blinked at her over the top of his teacup.  
“Yes,” Kumiko responded quietly, looking down into her own cup so as to not meet her brother’s stare.  
Keigo took a sip of his tea and looked at the girl sitting across from him more seriously than he ever had.  
“It is a very bad idea to get mixed up with him Kumi. He’s a thug. He beats people up for the hell of it.. What made you even notice a guy like that anyway?”  
Kumiko sighed as she told her brother about the beating and how she had taken pity on Akutsu and sort of nursed him back to health and let him crash at her house for a while. She hesitated but in the end, she did finally tell Keigo about the kiss and how it had caused her confusion about her feelings for Akutsu.  
“Well that doesn’t surprise me. You always did have a soft spot for helpless animals. And if he’s mixed up with guys from Higa, who are worse than Akutsu in more ways than one and were the ones to beat him so badly, then you really should stay as far away from Akutsu Jin as you can. And I can’t believe you actually let him into our aunt and uncle’s house and even allowed him to kiss you,” he added accusingly. “Why in the world would you let someone like that put their lips anywhere near you?”  
Kumiko couldn’t help but notice how disgusted Keigo sounded while he was lecturing her. While she didn’t blame him for it, as she knew people’s opinions of Akutsu, she didn’t necessarily think that she deserved his disgust being aimed at her.  
Finally, after several minutes of his ranting Kumiko couldn’t take it anymore and started yelling at her brother.  
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you about any of this at all. I was just trying to get someone to listen to me and be helpful so I came to you. I didn’t want a damn lecture about how someone who’s so _unworthy_ shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near me! Just because you think the only guy an Atobe is worth dating is someone with substantial social standing doesn’t mean that I think that too! I don’t need you, or anyone else, telling me who I can and cannot date. I should be able to make my own decisions, even if they end up being bad ones.”  
She was so angry at him that, without thinking, Kumiko picked up her cup of tea and threw it across the kitchen where it hit a cabinet and shattered, scattering pieces of porcelain around the floor. Mere seconds after the pieces hit the floor Kabaji stuck his head in to see what the problem was. Kumiko wasn’t really sure whether it was her yelling or the sound of breaking china that drew him back to the kitchen. But the moment he saw what happened, he disappeared again, presumably to grab a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.  
Keigo on the other hand just stared at Kumiko blinking. She imagined that he probably never expected his innocent younger sister to lose her temper that easily, let alone break one of his favorite and precious teacups that only she was allowed to use.  
Just as she suspected, Kabaji returned once again to the kitchen with a broom and dustpan in hand and went straight to clean up the pieces of cup scattered across the floor. Kumiko figured it was time for her to leave after her outburst so she mumbled something about it getting late and the need to return to study for upcoming exams as she stood to leave. Before making her exit however, she went over to Kabaji and apologized for making a mess, then leaving her brother sitting there with a look of shock still on his face as he watched her leave.  
~~~  
Two weeks went by and Kumiko still wouldn’t speak to her brother. Every time Keigo would call or email his sister to try to talk to her, she would send his call to voicemail and delete his message without listening to it or delete the email without even looking at it. When he moved to trying to just call their aunt and uncle’s home phone, Kumiko would just hang the phone up as soon as the coast was clear.  
As he didn’t usually call their home phone to talk to Kumiko, after the first couple times Keigo phoned, they would start listening on one of the other phones to try to see what was going on. They were shocked when she would hang up on him without even talking to him and when they questioned her about it, she would just say that she had been too busy with homework or make some other excuse as to why she hung up on her brother. Kumiko hadn’t told them about Akutsu or the fight with her brother so they couldn’t understand why she never wanted to talk to her brother when he called.   
Finally, after three weeks of refusing to talk to him, Kumiko received an email from Keigo whose subject told her that if she didn’t read the message and respond, he would tell their parents about Akutsu. So, she reluctantly read the email and responded to it, agreeing to allow her brother and his boyfriend to take her to dinner so they could talk. Kumiko had no idea why Keigo insisted that his boyfriend come along but she figured that with the combination of the public place and having the other man as a witness that could attest to any tantrums Kumiko threw and hold it against her.  
When she arrived at the restaurant, she didn’t really like the look on their faces as she went to sit down at the table that was in the VIP section of an expensive restaurant that her brother favored. She had seen Keigo with evil smirk on his face many times before, although none of his smirks held a candle to how evil Kite looked that day. However, never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined Tezuka Kunimitsu looking so malicious. So, she sat down rather cautiously, though neither gave any indication as to why they both looked like they had hatched some sort of evil plan until after they had ordered their dinner and were sitting there drinking wine.  
“So, Kumiko, I hear you had a run in with Akutsu Jin,” Tezuka said, rather casually. Before she could respond he continued, “Well, Keigo and I have been discussing it and we believe we have come up with a solution to your little problem.”  
He glanced over at his silver haired boyfriend before elaborating, “We have decided to set you up on a few dates with some of our old teammates. Before you object, let me say that you may really like some of the guys we were thinking of. Also, Keigo told me about your little tantrum when you first told him about how you were feeling and I think he has something to say to you.”  
Kumiko looked at her brother and the Atobe heir looked as though he would rather eat worms than say what he was about to.  
“I’m really sorry that I said all those harsh things. I realize that you were just looking or someone to confide in. While our plan is, for the most part, my idea to try to get you over your uncertain feelings about that…person,” he said with a sneer. “I promise I will not think too about you declining. I just don’t want you to keep ignoring my calls and emails again.”  
Kumiko thought about the proposal and while she wasn’t thrilled with idea of Tezuka and Keigo trying to coerce their ex-teammates into dating an Atobe, she told them, “Why the hell not. It will be nice to be distracted from Akutsu. And I admit I’ve hated not talking to you either,” she added with a smile.


	4. Chapter 4

Several days later, when Kumiko went to visit her brother to decide where they wanted to take their father out his birthday, Keigo gave her a notebook that he had probably had Kabaji put together with questionnaires about each guy that Tezuka and her brother had managed to convince to date her. Somehow, each of the former captains had each blackmailed three of their ex-teammates to agree to go on a date with her. The first page of the notebook instructed her that she would have one date every other night for two weeks, with no dates on weekends, and each date would alternate which school the guy had attended. Then, when she got home from the date, so as to not have them run together in her head and to give Keigo and Tezuka an idea of what she actually thought about the date, she would fill out the questionnaire of about 20 questions. Once she gave the notebook back to Keigo after her final date, he and his boyfriend would decide which guy they thought would be best for Kumiko and suggest him to her but not force her to date any certain guy lest she get mad and not talk to her brother ever again.  
When Kumiko looked at who her first date would be with, she would admit that she was semi-nervous. He had graduated with her brother from Hyoutei and she had only met him once or twice when she went to watch Keigo play a tournament. He hadn’t changed much since then either. He was tall and his hair was a dark blue, which Kumiko had actually always found rather intriguing on him and the small, frameless, oval lensed glasses that he always wore still hid his dark and sensuous eyes. He didn’t seem nervous at all when they met at the restaurant and the way he bent down to brush the back of her hand with his lips as she offered it to him made the few butterflies that she had left in the stomach by then flutter furiously. When he spoke, his voice was even more sensuous than his eyes.  
“Well, I must say that you are as charming as Keigo said you would be,” he said with an actual purr in his voice.  
Kumiko wouldn’t have been surprised if her brother had played her out to be some sort of goddess in order to get the bespectacled man to agree to go out with her so she just smiled and allowed him to keep trying to act as gentlemanly as possible by pulling out her chair and waiting or her to sit before taking his own seat.  
Thankfully though, the rest of the date was rather ordinary. Although she did feel that the guy seemed to be trying way too hard to get her to like him and his seductive voice soon started to wear on her nerves. By the end of the date, she was thankful that she had met him at the restaurant as a result of various circumstances preventing him from picking her up from her aunt and uncle’s house because she couldn’t imagine having to ride home with him and endure even more of it.  
When she was finally back in her room later that evening, Kumiko dug out the notebook, complete with its embossed cover Keigo had felt that it needed, and as she looked at the shiny letters emblazoned on it, she started to wonder how long he had been planning this entire thing. Apparently when the notebook was arranged, it wasn’t certain what order the dates would be in so the pages were just arranged alphabetically. So, she had to flip through the pages for a moment before she found the page with “Oshitari Yuushi” written in her brother’s neat, curly script at the top.  
As she looked over the questionnaire, she blew out a sigh at the sheer ridiculousness of it before grabbing a pen from the cup on her desk and starting to evaluate her first date.  
~~~~  
The second guy the two men had set her up with she had only ever heard about when Keigo or Tezuka had been giving her a review of a tournament that she hadn’t been able to make. He was slightly on the scrawny side but he was rather tall. He also looked like a total nerd. His short black hair was spiked up in all different directions off his head and he wore small, black framed, rectangular glasses that only added to the nerd look.  
At first, he seemed extremely nervous but once they had sat down and ordered their dinner, he seemed to relax. Kumiko was surprised that the date didn’t end up being an entire mess and she would admit that she found the whole nerdy look quite adorable on the guy.  
That night, just as she had finished filling out the questionnaire, she got a message from Tezuka. _I hear your date with Inui went well. I hope you continue to like the men that your brother and I have chosen as possible boyfriends for you. Again, I’m really sorry about this entire thing but you know sometimes it’s better to just let Keigo play his little games than argue with him._  
~~~~  
The next two dates were equally uneventful.  
Wakashi Hiyoshi from Hyoutei had always seemed really strange to her every time she met him and her opinion didn’t change much after their date. He wasn’t quite _as_ weird as he used to be but he was still rather odd. Although Kumiko did find that he was rather nice and if you got past his weirdness, he was actually quite good looking.  
Her second date from Seigaku was Kaidoh Kaoru. She was reminded a bit of Akutsu with the way the guy looked so pissed off and serious. However the date wasn’t overly horrible and she would even admit that she actually had fun. Kumiko was actually kind of sad when the date was over and she would admit that she wouldn’t have minded being able to get to know him more or perhaps even seeing him again. She argued with herself about whether or not to actually tell Keigo that but in the end she decided to go ahead and be honest and tell him that she actually didn’t dislike one of the choices made by him or his boyfriend as a potential significant other for Kumiko.  
The final man from Hyoutei took her completely by surprise. Her first thought was that he was there as a joke and thought that at some point in the very near future she would either have to slap her brother as hard as she possibly could, or just use his teacups for tennis balls the next time she felt the urge to hit the courts. The second thought that passed through her head was that Keigo hadn’t actually managed to get a third schmuck to go out with her so he was just taking her out himself and was trying to make it as grand as possible by having his best friend act as a chauffeur.  
When she opened the door, she was utterly confused as to why Kabaji was standing on the porch, dressed up more than she had ever seen him. He was wearing black dress pants and a dark, crimson button down shirt and his hair was slicked back. Kumiko actually would have gone far enough to say that he looked rather handsome if she could actually get passed how confused she was.  
Kabaji didn’t look up at first when she opened the door but apparently decided after a moment to just get it over with and he responded to her quizzical expression by saying awkwardly, “Hello, Kumiko. I’m here as your date for this evening.”  
“Kabaji? Is this a prank of Keigo’s?” Kumiko asked. Before he could respond she suggested, “Or is it some kind of punishment for you for leaving a minute wrinkle in one of his shirts? If it is, you don’t have to go through with it.”  
Her brother’s best friend surprised her even more as he replied energetically, “What? No, it’s nothing like that. Well, I think he did want to annoy you a bit for breaking his teacup, but I did honestly want to come,” he added sheepishly.  
Kumiko couldn’t believe it. That was probably the first time that she had ever seen Kabaji act like a regular human being, let alone say more than just a few words at a time. Sometimes, she even wondered if her brother had managed to create his own personal robot and disguise him as a fellow student with how Kabaji would go about his work almost mechanically and answering with only an _“usu”_ to absolutely anything Keigo asked of him.  
Their evening wasn’t completely horrible and Kumiko was quite surprised that Kabaji even managed to keep the conversation going while they ate without too many awkward silences. Later, when he dropped her back off at her aunt and uncle’s house, she even allowed him to give her cheek a light peck before saying goodbye and watching as she made it safely into the house before leaving. Once inside, Kumiko went straight to her room and dug out the binder with the evaluation sheets in it and filled out Kabaji’s page honestly, saying that the evening was rather enjoyable. At the bottom however, she wrote in dark, capital letters as big as she could in the empty space:  
 **I WILL GET YOU MY PRETTY AND YOUR LITTLE BOYFRIEND TOO! KEIGO, YOU OWE ME!!**


	5. Chapter 5

On the night of the final date, Kumiko was glad that the whole game that her brother had arranged was going to be over with. All she had to do was have dinner with Fuji Shusuke.  
As he was one of Tezuka’s former teammates, she wasn’t really sure about exactly who he was. When she had asked Tezuka about him, all he would say was that he was a genius at tennis, and according to some people, at other things as well. He did warn her however that he could come off as harsh and to watch out for that. With what little information she had and the picture in her head that she had come up with when trying to remember what he looked like from seeing him at tournaments, Kumiko was rather apprehensive when she opened the door that evening.  
While she had never actually met Fuj formally before, she _had_ seen his matches against Hyoutei all those years ago and while her inner picture of him was probably completely off, she knew that the man standing in front of her was definitely _not_ Fuji Shusuke.  
The guy was kind of scrawny but Kumiko thought he looked like was probably pretty muscular like the red head that helped beat up Akutsu. He had a head full of blonde hair and very blue eyes. She didn’t remember anyone from Seigaku that had those features so she knew something had to be fishy about the guy.  
“Um, can I help you with something?” Kumiko asked, trying to sound as polite as she could and not show how perturbed she was as to what kind of joke that Keigo and Tezuka were trying to play this time.  
Without even looking up, the boy replied, “Atobe Kumiko?” Upon her nod, he continued, “I’m here to be your date for the evening.”  
She was slightly annoyed at the arrival of the strange man but she wasn’t in the mood to play Keigo’s games so she decided to just go along with it. So, she grabbed her purse from where she had set it by the door and told the mysterious man they could go and let him escort her to his car.  
They rode the first couple miles in silence before Kumiko’s curiosity got the better of her.  
She tried to sound innocent as she asked, “So, um what was your name again? I’ve had a pretty crazy day and my memory’s kind of jumbled. So, I’m sorry to say I’ve forgotten.”  
Without even taking his eyes off the road, the blonde haired boy answered with, “Hirakoba Rin.”  
Something about the name was familiar but it wasn’t because he was from Seigaku’s team. So, she decided to be direct and let her inner Keigo come out as she said, “OK…While I don’t know Seigaku’s team that well, I don’t remember them having a team member with blonde hair and blue eyes. So can I ask who the hell you are exactly?”  
The guy glanced at her for a second and she figured he knew she would have noticed there was something off about him sooner or later.  
“You’re right. I didn’t go to Seigaku. I’m actually still in high school. I lost a match against Fuji and since I don’t think he really wanted to come tonight in the first place because, from what I gathered, Tezuka apparently blackmailed him into it or something like that. So, he said that I had to be your date or he would make my life absolutely miserable. I figured it would be better to just take you out than risk dealing with Fuji Shusuke’s wrath.”  
Kumiko couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The fact that Fuji thought that she was something he could bet away to some weirdo pissed her off almost as much as her brother had which started this whole thing anyway. But, she managed to regain her composure enough to ask him politely where he went to school.  
“I’m a senior at Higa High School,” he replied quietly.  
That was when it dawned on her as to why the guy’s name seemed so familiar. He was apparently the reason that Akutsu was beaten so badly.  
“So, are you aware that some of your friends beat the crap out of Yamabuki High’s tennis team captain recently? According to them, it was done because Akutsu was bragging about kicking your ass in tennis but really didn’t.”  
Rin sighed but again never took his eyes off the road as he replied, “Yeah, I know. But that’s actually not the real reason they were there to beat him up.” Kumiko was going to ask what the real was but he continued before she could even open her mouth. “While it’s true I was playing a match against Akutsu and it was interrupted, it wasn’t because of what Kai said. Apparently Kite noticed you walking by the courts and then disappear so he warned Kai to keep his mouth shut in case you were still around and had seen them or could hear them.”  
“I wondered why three guys would gang up on a single person just because of a rumor,” Kumiko commented.  
“I hate to admit it but it’s kind of what they do. They don’t do it for just any reason and are actually really nice guys unless someone harms one of our teammates. But the reason the game was interrupted was because Akutsu hit our other regular team member, Tanishi Kei, with one of his shots. Tanishi was sitting in the referee’s stand calling the points and was knocked out by the ball. When he fell, he broke his wrist and had to give up his position as a team regular for the rest of the year. Kite, who’s our team captain, wasn’t too happy about it because he worked hard to get our team perfect with his Shukuchihou method and now he has to work hard to get one of the non-regulars up to the same level that the rest of us are. So, he recruited Kai and Chinen to go with him to beat him up.”  
At this point they had reached the restaurant and he finally turned to look at Kumiko to say apologetically, “I’m really sorry you had to see them beating someone up like that. They normally are really awesome guys.”  
While they ate, Rin continued to enlighten Kumiko about how the three guys that she had seen beat up Akutsu so badly were really nice guys, except on the tennis courts it seemed. During the conversation, Kumiko started to understand why the three men from Higa had attacked Akutsu. From what Rin told her, during their match, Akutsu had deliberately aimed the shot at Tanishi because he had made a comment about Akutsu’s tennis style. Apparently Tanishi had compared Akutsu’s playing to a Neanderthal and Akutsu had gotten angry.  
The news that Akutsu had started the whole confrontation over just a comment about how he played tennis made Kumiko feel even more confused about how to deal with the feelings she had developed for Akutsu. She would admit, though not to her brother again, that she had started to look at Akutsu in a slightly different light than before after seeing what she thought was his softer side. However, because of his reputation, she had been apprehensive about getting too close. Now that she heard what Rin had to say, she realized that perhaps Akutsu Jin _wasn’t_ someone she wanted to get mixed up with. Maybe the “softer side” that she thought she had seen was just him trying to get in her pants after she helped him.  
After she and Rin had finished their dinner, Kumiko realized that she had really enjoyed her date with the blonde boy and wasn’t quite ready for it to end. She told Rin as much and he suggested they go for a walk. On their walk they talked about everything but tennis which Kumiko was glad for since she never really understood all the technical details about different shots and styles of play. After a while, Kumiko looked down only to realize that they had begun to hold hands while they walked. She looked back up and began to smile widely as she began to wonder what Keigo would think when he found out that she had enjoyed herself so much with someone who wasn’t part of his original line-up of possible boyfriends for his sister.  
When they were finally back to her aunt and uncle’s house, it was dark but Kumiko was still determined to not let her time with Rin to end. So, she convinced him to stay and watch a movie with her. The pair only ended up seeing about the first 30 minutes of it before Rin leaned over and kissed her. Kumiko returned the kiss with a passionate one of her own and before she knew it, the credits were scrolling past on the screen. Rin decided then that it was getting awfully late and he really should be heading home.  
Before he left however, he grabbed a pen off the coffee table and wrote his phone number on the corner of Kumiko’s notebook that was still lying open on the table from earlier in the evening when she was working on homework. After one last goodbye kiss, Kumiko watched Rin drive away before running back inside, snatching her notebook off the table and ran to her room. She was so flustered about how well the evening went while she got ready to bed that she almost forgot about the questionnaire for her brother.  
She pulled the folder from her desk drawer and flipped to the page designated for Fuji. She took a marker and marked out his name before writing Hirakoba Rin above it. Kumiko didn’t even bother with filling out the questions. She simply wrote as big as she could across the page with the marker she had used to mark out Fuji’s name,  
 **I REALLY LIKE HIM KEIGO AND I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!**  
~~~  
In the week following their date, Rin and Kumiko met several times, each time usually ending in a make out session in her bedroom or his car, and they spoke on the phone every day. Kumiko was a bit worried about what Keigo would say when she met with him to give him the binder of questionnaires but Rin assured her that if her brother really loved her and cared about her happiness then he would be happy for her, especially since dating Rin had gotten her mind completely off Akutsu.  
When Kumiko did give her brother the folder, Keigo opened it and leafed through it, reading something here or there and when he reached the page originally meant for Fuji, he stopped and looked at her with one of his eyebrows slid so far up his forehead, it had completely disappeared behind his silver bangs.  
“Kumiko, what is this? Who is Hirakoba Rin?” he asked puzzled.  
Kumiko looked up from the cup of tea she was staring into, just waiting for that exact question, finally showing her brother the wide smirk that was stretched across her face. She explained to Keigo about the bet that Fuji had placed against Rin, making the other boy go on the date in his place. She also told him about their date and how she hadn’t wanted it to end because she really liked the blonde boy from Okinawa. After a few moments of hesitation, she informed her brother that she was now pretty much dating Hirakoba Rin.  
Keigo seemed to be thinking about what she told him for a minute before closing the binder, walking to the trash can and tossing it inside. Kumiko didn’t know what to think about it at first so she just stared at her brother. But, after she realized what his actions had meant, her smile got even wider and she jumped up to wrap her arms tightly around her older brother.   
When she finally let go of him, Keigo put his hands firmly on her shoulders and looked her in the eye as he said, “Kumiko, I’m glad that you found someone other than Akutsu to want to be in a relationship with. However, it also concerns me a bit.” Kumiko opened her mouth to say something but Keigo put his hand over her mouth to stop her as he continued. “Knowing his reputation, I have a sinking feeling that if Akutsu Jin was actually starting to like you as much as you though he was, I wouldn’t put it past the Neanderthal to be the jealous type, especially once he finds out you are in a relationship with a member of the same team that attacked him. So I want you to promise me that if he comes near you or threatens you at all, that you will let me know as soon as possible so I can take care of it.”  
Kumiko was speechless. She hadn’t even thought of Akutsu being jealous and possibly coming after her. She also never expected her brother to want to “take care of it” if he did. But, she assured him that he would be the first to know if she felt like Akutsu may try to harm her.


	6. Chapter 6

A few nights after her discussion with Keigo, Kumiko was almost asleep when she thought she heard a noise outside her bedroom window. She lay still for a minute and listened but didn’t hear anything else. So, she decided it was probably just the wind making a branch scratch against a window and went back to sleep.  
Several hours later, something caused Kumiko to be jolted awake and the moment she was, she could feel that she wasn’t totally alone in her bed. When she looked down, she saw there was a pair of very muscular arms wrapped around her and holding her tightly against whoever was there with her. A light breeze blew through the room, making her realize that whoever had come into her room had used that as their entry way. The wind also carried the smell of cigarettes to her nose, presumably coming from whoever was holding her to them as they slept rather soundly behind her. Kumiko turned around as much as she could within the tight grasp of the intruder so she could look at their face in the moonlight shining through the open window. She was surprised when she saw the long silver locks hanging in the person’s face.  
“Akutsu?” she whispered to him. When he didn’t respond, she asked again, this time louder, “Akutsu?”  
“ _Hmm,_ ” was the only response that she received as he instead just pulled her closer to him before snuggling his head into her back.  
Annoyed with his response, Kumiko reached her hand back as far back as she could and slapped his hip as hard as she could.   
“Oi! Akutsu, wake up!” she hissed. When he finally lifted his head away from her, she added, “What are you doing here?”  
“I’m trying to sleep. So why don’t you do join me?”  
Kumiko punched his hip this time but instead of complaining, Akutsu just grabbed her fist and pried it open so he could intertwine his fingers with her.  
“Akutsu, if you don’t tell me what the hell you are doing in my bedroom, I _will_ scream and wake up my aunt and uncle.”  
The response was apparently enough to get his full attention. He loosened his grip on her slightly, although he still held her hand in his, and rolled her over to face him.  
“I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. I thought maybe skipping school and taking it easy while I healed from being beaten up would help take my mind off of you. But, I just couldn’t stop thinking about that day. You helped me after those jerks kicked my ass so badly when no one else would have even glanced my way, just because of who I am. You are the first person who ever showed real compassion to me. Normally I probably wouldn’t have even given you the time of day, both because of who I am and because of who your brother is. But, when I was here and you were cleaning up the wounds, I realized that you are absolutely beautiful and to hell with who you’re related to.”  
While he spoke, Akutsu had let her hand go and was now running his fingers through her hair. Try as she might to resist, Kumiko couldn’t help but close her eyes at the sensation of his long, calloused fingers sliding through her hair. When she opened her eyes after he stopped talking, he was just lying there looking at her. Again, she saw the softer side of him that she had seen that day several weeks ago and it made her completely forget about her conversation with Rin about how much of a jerk Akutsu Jin could be. In the light of the moonlight and in this situation, he seemed like he really could be a decent person and all he needed was someone to show him some kindness.  
Akutsu bent his head down to kiss her and Kumiko found herself unable to resist wanting to deepen the kiss after only a few seconds. The silver haired man obliged her advances and parted his lips ever so slightly. He shifted their bodies so that he was kneeling above her, pulling away from the kiss to pull his shirt over his head and toss it on the floor. After the shirt was gone, Kumiko noticed the last traces of the bruises on his chest and she remembered who had caused them and she suddenly felt a big pang of guilt as she remembered that she was now in a relationship with Rin. Not to mention her promise to herself to not get mixed up with Akutsu Jin in the first place.  
Kumiko put her palm on his chest to push him off of her as he leaned in for another kiss as she said, “Akutsu, wait. I can’t do this. I have a boyfriend now.”  
Akutsu stared at her for a minute, looking very puzzled at her sudden resistance, before responding, “What does that matter? I really like you Kumiko. I’ve never felt that way about any other girl before. Just forget about your boyfriend for a while and spend the night with me.”  
As he bent down to try to kiss her again, Kumiko moved her head to the side so that his lips only hit her cheek. She then tried to move out from under him using her knee as leverage but Akutsu wouldn’t move at all.  
“Damn it Kumiko. Who are you suddenly so involved with? When you kissed me before you didn’t mention that you had a boyfriend,” he snarled as he sat up, still keeping his knees planted on either side of her so she couldn’t escape.  
“Well I didn’t have a boyfriend then. But that was several weeks ago Akutsu. Do you think I’m not capable of finding someone that wants to be in a relationship with an Atobe?” she sneered.  
Akutsu just glared at her. “Who you are related t is NOT the point. I told you that.”  
Kumiko had to watch the volume of her voice as she hissed back, “I know it’s not the point. The point is that I have a boyfriend and I CANNOT be doing this with you!”  
That was when it happened. She wouldn’t say she was entirely surprised; she was mostly just appalled that he would actually go that far. Akutsu lifted his right hand and slapped Kumiko hard across the face.  
In her rage of what he had just done, Kumiko suddenly found the surge of strength that she needed and managed to push him completely off of her and onto the floor. She clamored out of bed as well and stood over him glaring at him as he glared right back up at her. Kumiko could tell that he had never been rejected by a girl like that before. As he pulled himself up off the floor, he looked so pissed she thought he could perhaps have given Kite a rung for his money. Maybe.  
“Akutsu Jin, get out of my hosue right now! Do not even _think_ of trying to talk to me ever again. I want you out of my life!”  
Kumiko turned to go out of her room and get some water to try to cool down but Akutsu grabbed her arm and turned her around to face him.  
The expression on his face had softened but he still looked fierce. “Kumiko, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hit you.”  
Kumiko didn’t want to hear his apology. She pulled her arm roughly from his grip and slapped him. This only seemed to enrage him even more. So, this time he punched her.  
Akutsu looked at her for a second, practically mirroring the shock that she felt, before turning to crawl back out her window and running off into the night.  
~~~  
The next morning, Kumiko was sitting in her car, debating whether to go see her brother and tell him what happened or not, when someone tapped on her window. She jumped about a foot off the seat but when she turned to see how it was, he was thankful that it was Rin.  
Kumiko climbed out of her car as quickly as she could so she could throw her arms around him and hold him tight. The blonde was started at first but it didn’t take long before he wrapped his arms around her and realized that she was crying into his shoulder. He slowly loosened his grip on her and gently pushed her away to hold her at arm’s length so he could take a good look at her.  
“Kumiko, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” Rin asked, worried.  
Kumiko didn’t say a word. Instead she simply took off the overly large sunglasses she was wearing and lifted her tear stained face so he could see the bruising around her eye.  
“Kumiko, what happened?!” Rin asked, sounding even more worried than he had just a moment before. “Who did this to you?”  
“A…Ak…” she tried to say but couldn’t get his name out through her sobs. But, Rin got the point.  
“AKUTSU!?! Akutsu Jin did this to you?” Rin practically screamed.  
Kumiko nodded and tried to choke back her tears long enough to tell him about the previous night’s events but couldn’t. However, Rin seemed to not need any more than just the name of who had hurt her.  
“Kumiko, don’t worry. I’ll take care of him so you won’t have to worry about him hurting you again. Just go see your brother. I know that’s what you were sitting there contemplating anyway.”  
Rin hooked his index finger under her chin and lifted her face up to look at him, the action actually causing a small smile to appear. Kumiko then pulled him tightly to her again and squeezed him lightly for a moment. Before he let her go, Rin kissed her lightly on the lips and then again at her temple next to the bruised area around her eye. He then helped her back into the driver’s seat of her car and Kumiko watched in her rearview mirror as she left before getting back into his own car.  
As she drove to her brother’s home, she didn’t even want to think about how Rin intended to “take care” of Akutsu. She knew how her brother would handle it. Keigo would normally use lots of phone calls to different people to socially destroy him. Although in this situation, Kumiko wouldn’t have been surprised if he used physical violence to hurt Akutsu like he hurt Kumiko. But, if Rin told Kite and his friends what happened, as she figured he was probably planning to do, Akutsu would more than likely be in for a repeat performance of Higa’s wrath.  
~~~  
Keigo was in front of his house when his sister pulled up. Judging by his sweat soaked attire, she could tell that he had just returned from a run and she had caught him before he had even been able to go in and get some water and cool off. When he saw Kumiko’s car approaching, he lifted his hand in a wave and made his way over to open her car door for her when she stopped.  
“Kumiko, I wasn’t expecting you,” he said. His expression immediately changed to concern when he saw how upset she was. “Kumiko, what’s wrong?”  
Again, she didn’t answer. She merely removed her sunglasses and exposed her black eye. This time, Keigo’s expression turned from concern to absolute horror.  
“Kumiko, who did that to you?”  
Kumiko knew that his reaction would be the exact same as Rin’s when she told him who it was so she put her hands on his shoulders, just like he had done to her only days before, and looked him in the eye as she responded.  
“Keigo, I DO NOT want you to overact when you hear this. Rin has already promised to take care of it and I’m sure that will probably involve Kite and his gang again.” When her brother opened his mouth to say something, no sound came out as he was apparently speechless from her words. So, she continued.  
“However, to answer your question, it was Akutsu. He snuck into my room last night and tried to sleep with me but I refused so he slapped me. Then, after I slapped him back, he punched me. He didn’t stay long after that though and I warned him to never come back. I think he was kind of freaked at how pissed I got after he did it that he was afraid I was going to hit him back and he didn’t want to try to hold himself back from wanting to do more than just the one punch.”  
Keigo was at a complete loss for words, something Kumiko had never seen happen to her brother before. However, after he really soaked in her words, his mouth tilted into a smirk. Kumiko was half surprised and half scared at her brother’s sudden maniacal expression that she stumbled away from him. Keigo however only continued to smile as he pulled his sister back to him and into the tightest hug he had ever given her.  
When he finally pulled away, he exclaimed, “Kumiko, I’m very proud of you. I would never have thought that you would be able to handle yourself as you just said that you did when Akutsu hit you. To actually make that Neanderthal afraid of you hitting him is fantastic. I’ll admit that it scares me slightly how fast you seem to have grown up, and it definitely makes me realize to never get on your bad side. But, I’m glad that you are able to handle yourself against someone trying to take advantage of you.  
“I also can’t wait to hear what Kite and his crew have in store for him. You have to tell Rin to come straight here after they take care of him.”  
The two Atobe siblings laughed at that and Kumiko immediately pulled out her phone to call her boyfriend as she followed Keigo into the house.  
~~~  
Roughly two hours later, Kumiko found out she was wrong. Rin didn’t tell his teammates about Akutsu. At least not right away.  
Kumiko and Keigo were sitting in her brother’s study looking through an old photo album that their parents had unearthed recently while having their attic cleaned out. Her phone ringing suddenly startled them both but they both started laughing again when she saw Rin’s number pop up on the screen.  
Only it wasn’t Rin’s voice on the other end of the line.  
“Kumiko? This is Kite Eishirou. I’m Rin’s friend. I didn’t know your number so I used his phone to call you. I don’t mean to alarm you but I figured you should know that something’s happened. You should come to the hospital as soon as you can.”  
Before she could ask what the hell he meant, he had hung up, leaving the silence of the disconnected call ringing through her head. She looked at her brother as she slowly lowered the phone from her ear and had to choke back almost as many tears as she had earlier as she tried to tell Rin what Akutsu had done as she told Keigo what Kite had just said. The older Atobe didn’t say a word. He simply grabbed his sister’s hand and pulled her to the front door. He grabbed his keys from the little silver dish in the front hallway as he went past and pulled her to the door.  
Though she couldn’t say anything, she could tell that they were both thankful that she had worn flip flops as he hastefully lifted each of her feet and slid them gently into her shoes. He rammed his own feet into a waiting pair of his sandals before pulling Kumiko out the door. They rode to the hospital in silence and as her brother pulled into a parking space, she didn’t even wait for her brother to shift the car into park before she flung herself from the car and practically sprinted to the front entrance.  
Once inside, she glanced around until found the information desk. Before she could even head in that direction however, she heard her name being called by an unfamiliar voice. Kumiko whipped her head around to find Chinen walking quickly towards her. He briefly introduced himself formally before putting one of his long arms around her shoulder and leading her to Rin’s room.  
Kumiko hesitated as she reached for the doorknob of the room Chinen stopped in front of. She took a deep breath and stepped into the room. A fearful whimper escaped her lips as she took in the horrible picture before her.  
Rin was lying in the single bed, hooked up to several machines, including what looked like one to help him breath. A steady, rhythmic beep resounded through the eerily quiet room from the one keeping track of his heartbeat. Kumiko thought that if you took away all the monitors and machines, it would look like he was simply sleeping soundly. Oh how she _wished_ he was only sleeping.  
Kite was sitting in one of the two chairs in the room and had looked up when she came in but didn’t say anything. After she had a chance to take it all in, he stood up and in a flash had closed the distance between them so he could hug her tightly. Even though she had experienced what he had helped do to Akutsu, Kumiko couldn’t help but hug him back even tighter as she sobbed into his chest. After several moments, Kite led her over to the chair that he had previously been occupying beside Rin’s bed and helped her sit down into it.  
“I’m sorry we’re meeting like this Kumiko-chan. Rin really likes you and from what we’ve heard, you really like him as well. The doctors say that Hirakoba-kun was in so much pain when we brought him in that they had no choice but to put him in a medically induced coma. While nothing major is broken, he does have a few cracked ribs that they are afraid could puncture one of his organs, hence the coma. He also has a broken nose and a broken arm.   
“If you don’t mind my asking, do you have any idea what he was doing? He called me and I could barely understand him. He said he needed me to come get him and take him to a hospital. When I got to the alleyway he had directed us to, he could barely move but Chinen-kun and I managed to get him here. On the way he kept saying he messed up and tried to ‘take care of it alone’. Do you have any idea what he meant?” Kite asked.  
Kumiko asked where the alley was and after hearing his response, she knew why he was in that particular area. The alley was close to the gym that Akutsu hung out at regularly. She only knew this bit of information because she passed by it when she went to the café that one of her friends’ family owned and had seen him through the large bay window that took up most of the front of the building.  
She looked at Rin before turning back to Kite to answer his question. “I know where that alley is and I’m pretty sure I know why he was there. The alley is close to the gym where Akutsu Jin works out. Rin must have figured out he would be there. He was going to confront Akutsu about this,” she said as she removed her sunglasses for the third time that day to expose Akutsu’s handiwork from the night before.  
When he saw her wound, Kite actually became rather enraged. She was afraid he may start throwing things or destroying the furniture. So, she stood up and slapped him. Hard. He simply glared at her, blinking.  
“Kite, getting angry here won’t help anyone. What _will_ help you, I’m sure, is to hunt down Akutsu and leave him in worse shape than you left him last time.”  
Kumiko surprised herself with her own words as she took Kite’s arm in hers and led him out of the room. The moment she stepped into the hallway, she met Chinen and her brother. She was thankful that they were right there instead of having to go search for them. She explained to Keigo what seemed to have happened to Rin and asked her brother to take Kite and Chinen and track Akutsu down. Keigo seemed shocked that she would ask him to do such a thing but he happily agreed. After each of them hugged her and told her they would be back as soon as they had taken care of things, they trooped down the hall while she returned to Rin’s room.  
She took the chair next to the bed and took the blonde boy’s hand in hers while she began to cry again and continued to cry for about 20 minutes. Just as she finally felt like she couldn’t shed another single tear, a doctor came into the room. He asked who she was and after she informed him that she was Rin’s girlfriend, the doctor explained what was wrong with the Okinawan and why they had needed to put him in an induced coma. He told her that they were going to give his injuries about a month to heal and if he was making the progress they were hoping for, they would begin to take him out of the coma.  
Roughly twenty minutes after the doctor had left, she heard the door open again and looked up to see Kite and her brother enter the room, a look of triumph stretched across their faces. Upon seeing her questioning look, Kite told Kumiko that he would sit with Rin for a few minutes while she went out into the hall with her brother so he could give a report of what happened. Once the door to her boyfriend’s hospital room was shut behind them, Keigo looked back at her with an expression that she could only describe as awe.  
“Kumiko, it was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen. I admit I had half doubted you when you told me about Kite’s rage but you really weren’t kidding. As soon as we tracked down the damn bastard, Akutsu was scared senseless. When he saw me, he seemed to know exactly why we were there. Kite is such a genius that he managed to back him into a corner while we followed him and he had nowhere to go once we closed in around him.  
“Everything after that is mostly a blur. But Kumiko, it was absolutely exhilarating. I’ve never felt like that before, even during a match. At one point Akutsu was _begging_ Kite to let Chinen release him and for Kite and I to stop hitting him. He even tried promising that he wouldn’t come near you or anyone from Higa again.”  
With that, Keigo actually laughed. It had been so long since Kumiko had heard her brother really laugh heartily like that that it took her by surprise. Most of the time, his laughs sounded more maniacal than amused.  
~~~~  
Three weeks later, the doctors had decided that Rin’s wounds were healing well enough to be brought out of his medically induced coma. Kumiko had sat with him for several hours every day after school while Kite or Chinen would sit with him during the day since they had graduated the year before and didn’t have to worry about missing classes. The day he was scheduled to be woken up, Kumiko made sure to be with him all day. After the doctor actually stopped the medicine keeping him asleep, they told her it would take about an hour or maybe even as many as four for him to become fully awake and to let them know when he did.  
Kumiko had fallen asleep with her head resting on the edge of the hospital bed and her fingers entertwined with Rin’s while she waited for him to wake up. She was jolted awake two hours after they stopped the medicine when she felt his index finger brush against hers. The motion caused her to sit bolt upright and when she did, she found Rin looking at her, a sort of groggy yet confused look on his face. She told him to hold on a minute before running from the room and tracking down the first doctor she could find to remove his breathing tube.  
Once that was done, Rin tried, with very little success, to apologize to Kumiko for trying to go after Akutsu himself. Seeing his difficulty, she placed a finger on his lips and told him not to say anything because it had been taken care of and she didn’t blame him. She pressed her lips lightly to his for a moment but the sound of the door opening made her quickly pull away.  
When she turned to see who had interrupted their intimate moment, she found Kite, Chinen and Keigo, who had become quite good friends since that fateful day, enter the room laughing about something. One by one their laughter ceased and turned to exclamations of surprise as they noticed that Rin was awake.


	7. Chapter 7

One year after her encounters with Akutsu and the guys from Okinawa, Kumiko’s life had fallen apart. She had graduated from high school with decent grades and then went to college. About a month into her first semester, she got a surprise visit from Keigo. However it wasn’t a good surprise.  
Her brother had come to inform her that their mother had been in an accident and was in the hospital. Keigo came to tell her in person because he didn’t think that was something to tell his sister over the phone. So, Kumiko took some time off and went to see her mother. While she was home, she became so distraught by trying to help take care of her mother that she ended up in such a huge fight with Rin that ended with the two going their separate ways. Kumiko never could remember what the fight had been about but she hated that it had destroyed their relationship like it had.  
After she was certain her mother was doing much better, Kumiko headed back to college. By the time she returned though, it was only a few weeks until the final exams. Her professors had been very lenient with her, which she assumed was partly because of her last name, and had allowed her to do any work they assigned from home and email it to them when it was due so she wouldn’t fail the whole semester. When she finally finished her last exam, Kumiko wasn’t sure she even wanted to continue with school because she hated being away when her mother had been in the accident and she didn’t want to be gone if something worse happened.  
Kumiko got what she considered to be an even bigger surprise than her brother’s spontaneous visit two weeks before Christmas. She had been out shopping for gifts most of the day when her car started making a very unsettling noise. Since she knew nothing about mechanics and she didn’t want to bother with getting a new car, she headed to find the nearest mechanic that could help her. Once she found one, she was given the OK to go inside the tiny building adjacent to the garage that was set up to be a waiting room and was assured that the problem with her car was only minor and would be easy to fix.  
About a half an hour later, she heard the door open and looked up to see a very greasy Akutsu Jin walk in the room, attempting to wipe some fresh gunk off his grease blackened hands. He was wearing a mechanics jumpsuit that was maybe only slightly greasier than his hands and his long silver hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a chunk still hanging down in his face that reminded Kumiko of the way he had looked that day after his first run in with the wrath of Higa that she allowed him to sleep off some of the pain on her aunt and uncle’s house. That thought sent butterflies fluttering through her stomach.  
When he looked up and realized who she was, he stopped in his tracks.  
He hesitated a moment before he spoke, and Kumiko thought that he had actually wanted to say something else but instead just told her, “Mt. Atobe, your car’s good to go.”  
“Um…Thanks,” she replied caught slightly off guard by his rather curt response. But she regained her composure and commented, “Wow, Akutsu. I haven’t seen you since graduation. You look…good.”  
Akutsu seemed to relax a bit after that and the two ended up talking for a while before Akutsu’s boss came looking for him. Akutsu apologized and Kumiko had to control the look of shock that was about to be planted on her face at the sight of it. But she immediately informed Akutsu’s boss that it was her fault that Akutsu had neglected his work and pleaded the man to not punish Akutsu because of it. His supervisor instructed her old classmate to get back to work and Akutsu was about to follow him out but Kumiko felt like she didn’t want to leave and perhaps never see Akutsu again now that she could tell that he had really changed. So she grabbed him by the arm and spun him around to face her.  
He gave her a very quizzical expression as she said, “Akutsu, I’m sorry I got you in trouble but I would definitely like to make it up to you and to catch up some more. I know this great new restaurant that is apparently owned by one of the guys that played for Rikkai.”  
Akutsu seemed hesitant but agreed and Kumiko was happy that he did. So they planned to meet that evening at her brother’s house, where she had moved into after her aunt and uncle decided to move to America after she graduated.  
After she was back in her brother’s biggest guest room that he designed specifically to her style once she moved in, she started digging through her vast closet for something sexy but not too over the top for what was essentially a first date. When she looked at her options, she realized that after her reconnection with Akutsu, she had suddenly been struck with the same feelings that she had struggled with before. But, she found herself enjoying it.  
The entire evening after that was a blur. Akutsu had picked her up and they went to dinner and had the best food probably either of them had ever had. The owner, Marui Bunta, an ex-member of Rikkai High’s tennis team, had even come over and spoken to them after hearing there was an Atobe dining in his restaurant. Although he did seem slightly crestfallen when he saw that it was Kumiko instead of Keigo or their father and he seemed even more taken aback when he realized she was dining with Akutsu.  
Later, when they got back to Keigo’s home, Kumiko managed to convince Akutsu to come in and have a cup of tea with her. As soon as she had set the cup in front of him, Akutsu pulled her to him and kissed her roughly. Kumiko melted into the kiss and allowed Akutsu to put large, strong hands on her hips and lift her up onto the counter. Kumiko was glad that Keigo and Kabaji, who had realized his true feelings for his friend about six months before, had decided to go away for the weekend as they kissed and struggled to get out of their clothes in the middle of his pristine kitchen.  
However, just as she had pulled her shirt off and Akutsu had started to fumble with the clasps on her bra, Kumiko’s phone rang. Akutsu cursed loudly but stepped away from her so she could hop off the counter to retrieve her phone. The caller was Keigo. Kabaji had gotten sick so they decided to end their getaway early and they would be getting back late so she shouldn’t wait up.  
Kumiko cursed herself after she hung up and told Akutsu that it would probably be a good idea to cut their evening short as well. His response was to just kiss her deeply. When she managed to collect herself and pull away, she decided that if Keigo wouldn’t be back until late and he had told her not to wait up, then he wouldn’t bother her when they came in. With that revelation, she took Akutsu by the hand and pulled him to her room, making sure they didn’t leave any loose articles of clothing behind.  
~~~~  
The next morning, Kumiko woke up wrapped in Akutsu’s arms and after a moment she realized they were both very naked as well. Kumiko smiled to herself as she tilted her chin up and kissed him lightly. Akutsu shifted and smiled as he slowly opened his eyes and looked down at her. She was about to tell her bedmate good morning when there was a knock on her bedroom door and Keigo’s voice followed.  
“Kumiko, you can’t possibly plan on sleeping the day away can you? Kabaji’s just finished breakfast and wants to know if you and your guest plan on eating with us or not.”  
Kumiko looked from the door to Akutsu and wondered how either of them knew that she wasn’t alone in her room. Akutsu whispered in her ear that everything would be fine and they probably did need to get up anyway. Kumiko called out to her brother that yes they were getting up and would join them as soon as she had taken a shower. She figured she would get Akutsu in the shower afterwards and then go out and tell her brother who her guest really was.  
When she emerged from her bathroom, she expected to find Akutsu waiting for her but instead she found Keigo sitting in her desk chair, arms crossed, with a very stern look on his face. Kumiko stopped in her tracks and was waiting for the lecture to begin but her brother surprised her by standing and closing the distance between them so he could wrap his arms around his younger sister in a hug.  
“You know I wasn’t too thrilled when Akutsu Jin came out of your room to have breakfast with us. But, he has defended himself rather well. He’s changed a lot Kumiko. I’m sure you probably only know part of what he told me but according to him, _you_ are the reason he got his act together. I wanted to tell you in private that I no longer have any objections to you dating him.  
“However I did warn him that if he EVER raised a violent hand to you again that I would destroy him,” Keigo added.  
Kumiko really didn’t know how to respond. The only conversation that she and Akutsu had engaged themselves in the night before was about what had been going on in their lives since they had graduated. Neither of them spoke a word about anything that happened after that day that the guys from Okinawa had first ganged up on him. She was surprised that in the twenty minutes it had taken her to shower, Akutsu had managed to convince her brother that he had good intentions and was no longer the jerk Keigo was familiar with.  
After that, Kumiko’s life just seemed to get better than it ever had been.  
She and Akutsu officially started dating and Keigo was more than willing to allow them to spend as much time as they wanted together in his home. That could include enjoying some of Kabaji’s wonderful food when Akutsu’s shift at the mechanic’s ended before settling in to watch a movie or going straight to her bedroom and enjoying more “adult” activities.  
However, just when her life was going well again, after a month of this happiness, Kumiko got a call she never expected to get that would throw a huge wrench in her perfect seeming life.  
She received a call from Rin wanting to get together and have dinner to talk about what had happened between them. At first, she debated hard with herself about whether to go or not. In the end, she decided to go ahead and meet with him. After all, she hadn’t been too thrilled with the way things had ended between them anyway and deep down she missed hanging out with him.  
~~~~  
During the days leading up to their dinner, Kumiko started to wonder why agreed to meet with Rin because she was afraid she may decide she still had feelings for him. But then she would realize that she was glad that her favorite blonde Okinawan had called because she hated how their relationship had ended.  
When she walked into her favorite coffee shop, she looked around and final managed to spot Rin at one of the smaller, more intimate tables that they used to share by the back corner of the shop. It had been excellent for feelings secluded and the need to lean in close to each other just to be heard in then noisy shop helped with creating an intimate conversation that would normally lead to lots of kissing. As she made her way closer to him, she noticed he had to cups sitting in front of him. After they exchanged pleasantries and he had given her a semi-awkward hug, Kumiko sat down and realized that one of the cups contained her favorite frozen, chocolate-y, caffeine loaded drink and she was pleasantly surprised that Rin had remembered her usual order so perfectly.  
They sat and talked for a while and Kumiko was glad that Rin wanted to reconcile with her and put their past disagreements behind them, even though Kumiko still couldn’t remember what they were.  
After a while they relocated to Keigo’s house and several hours later, they were sitting in Kumiko’s bedroom looking through some old photos that had been taken while they were dating that Kumiko hadn’t brought herself to dispose of when Rin leaned over and kissed her. It wasn’t a long kiss, but it was enough for Kumiko’s memories of how much fun she had had with Rin to come flooding back to her. They were such happy memories that she immediately threw her arms around her ex-boyfriend and immediately tried to fall into their old habits of going further than just kissing.  
Rin however, realized what they were doing wasn’t right with their current relationship so he broke from the kiss and gently pushed Kumiko away from him. Kumiko looked at him puzzled for a second before apologizing several times before excusing herself to go see if Kabaji had any cookies, brownies or some other sort of sweets made. Rin followed her and once she was about to sit down at the vast island with a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and a cup of her favorite tea in front of her and another set out for Rin, the Okinawan surprised her again by wrapping his arms tightly around her and apologized for kissing her in the first place.  
“Kumiko, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to lead you on. I know that you’re dating Akutsu now and I respect that. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful you looked and looking at those pictures I remembered all the great times we had together and I did something that I shouldn’t have. I don’t want things to be awkward between us so if you’d like me to leave, I will.”  
“NO!” she said, more enthusiastic than she meant. “I mean, no, you don’t have to leave. It was my fault for trying to make more of the kiss than what was there. I promise things won’t be awkward. I want to keep hanging out with you.”


	8. Chapter 8

Kumiko knew that this was coming. She had secretly been talking to, and some would probably even say dating, Rin for the past several weeks, all behind Akutsu’s back as well as her brother’s. Eventually, Keigo found out and told her that he wasn’t going to meddle in her life this time because she needed to decide which one she wanted to be with more on her own. She figured that Akutsu would catch on sooner or later and confront her about it and she didn’t imagine he would be so gentle about it.  
What she wasn’t expecting was an absolute ultimatum to choose between the two of them. She had so much history with the two men that she didn’t know what to think or who she wanted to be with. However, she started to think about the night when Akutsu snuck into her room and when she rejected him, he had physically hurt her. The main thing she remembered about the incident was how Rin confronted her oppressor by himself and putting his own life in danger to defend the girl that he loved. But she also remembered that because of that incident, Akutsu had changed drastically and was a lot gentler and almost seemed like an entirely different person than he had been in high school.  
After receiving the ultimatum, Kumiko decided that she needed some time to think and she didn’t want to do it with the two of them staring at her judgingly while she did it. She also at least wanted to hear her brother’s opinion on Akutsu’s demand. So without saying anything, she stood and practically ran out of the room in search of where her brother was hiding. After finally finding Keigo in his office, working on some sort of paperwork, she snuck inside and shut and locked the door behind her.  
Keigo looked up and once he realized that she was on the verge of tears, the Atobe heir shoved away from his desk so quickly that Kumiko swore she could see several of the papers he had just been looking over rustle and almost fly onto the floor as he ran to wrap his arms tightly around her.  
“Kumiko, what on earth is it this time? Every time you are around either of those two, it seems you just end up upset. Am I going to have to kick both of them out and force you to never see either of them again?”  
Kumiko sniffed as she hugged her brother tightly back and replied, “You probably wouldn’t have to force me at all.”  
With Keigo’s puzzled expression, Kumiko explained how Akutsu discovered that she had secretly been hanging out with Rin and how he had told her that she now had to choose between the two of them. She told Keigo that while she figured this day would come but she had hoped to be able to make the decision in her own time.  
“That Neanderthal! He has no right to put so much pressure on you to choose between him and Rin. Even though I partly agree with him that you should only be dating one guy at a time. But that’s beside the point. What are you going to do, Kumi? Do you want me to give him my thoughts on the matter?”  
Kumiko actually managed to laugh at his reaction and told her brother, “No, I think I’ve thought about it enough and that I know who I want to be with. I’ll let you get back to work and go tell them my decision. Thanks for being here to vent and give me some time to think about it.”  
Kumiko hugged her brother one more time before leaving Keigo’s office and fining Akutsu and Rin in the living room, where she had left them, glaring at each other from opposite sides of the room. For a moment, she was reminded of the fierce look on Chinen’s face the day the two men had started to change her life completely and she almost let out a chuckle. But she realized the seriousness of the situation between the two men and instead cleared her throat lightly and they both snapped their heads up and looked at her expectantly.  
“First I’d like to say that I’m sorry for running out like that. I just needed some time to think and was feeling too much pressure being in here to be able to think straight. But I have made my decision on who I want to be with…”  
~~~~  
Kumiko woke up slowly and within seconds realized that her limbs were entwined with someone other than whom she had been used to. She was accustomed to waking up and being wrapped in long, muscular arms with the stench of cigarettes still clinging to the man’s hair and body. This morning however, _she_ was the one with her arms wrapped around a much smaller body with the smell of ocean and coconut and even traces of sunscreen practically embedded in the strands of his hair and his skin.  
As she rolled over, making sure not to disturb her bedmate, to see what time it was, she realized that she wasn’t in her own room. She was in an unfamiliar, pale blue room that had French doors that opened onto a small deck and beyond that was a small stretch of almost blinding white sand that led right into the beautifully emerald green water of the ocean.   
Kumiko rolled back over, remembering exactly where she was and how she had gotten there and began to smile widely. She wrapped her arm back around Hirakoba Rin and promptly fell back into a deep slumber, hoping not to wake up again for another several hours.  
After so many ups and downs and twists and turns, Atobe Kumiko’s life was finally perfect and she intended to keep it that way.


End file.
